


A Cheesy Story About Making Muffins

by JarvisUandDUMEtoo



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Baking, Domestic Avengers, Domestic Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Funny, Happy, M/M, Muffins, Pre-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 01:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18305537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JarvisUandDUMEtoo/pseuds/JarvisUandDUMEtoo
Summary: Sure they can save the world, but can they figure out how to make muffins? No. No they cannot.





	A Cheesy Story About Making Muffins

There was a loud clatter from the kitchen, loud enough to drown out the sounds of the baseball game on TV. Steve twisted over the back of the couch to see the source of the noise, just in time to see Tony knock an entire bag of flour on the floor in his desperate bid to keep the measuring cups from falling off the counter top. 

“You good in there?” 

“Yes!” 

Steve mentally shrugged and went back to watching TV. The Dodgers were shit this year, but what was new. There was more clattering in the kitchen and muffled cursing. 

“I’ll just cook, all alone, because no one in this tower loves or appreciates me.” Tony yelled. 

“Not even your boyfriend?” Steve said idly, not looking away from the TV. It looked like the team was going to get a walk and that was going to be the most progress they’d made so far this inning. 

“Especially my boyfriend, who sees me struggling and does nothing to help.” 

“Yeah, that sounds rough, buddy. He seems like a jerk.” 

“He has his redeeming qualities.” 

“Hmmm. That's nice to hear.” 

Steve muted the TV and walked around the couch to the kitchen, where Tony was dumping the spilled flour from a dustbin into the trash. He wrapped his arms around Tony's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. 

“Hi.” 

Tony laughed and leaned back into the embrace. “Hi.” 

Steve let Tony go and looked over the mess of flour and bowls scatter across the counter. He had the feeling that he would be the one washing them later. 

“So what exactly is going on here?” 

“Clint texted and said that they’re back from their mission, and Nat broke her arm. I wanted to make her something nice.” 

“You big softy.” 

“It’s so she doesn’t kill us all in our sleep. She’s grumpy enough on a normal day.” 

“Sure. So what are you making?” 

“Right now? A mess. I’m hoping it will somehow turn into muffins at some point.” 

Steve looked through the bowls on the counter top. None of it looked like muffin batter. One was a bowl of screws, another of yarn, one of either frosting or glue. He picked up a bowl filled with carrots. 

“Are they carrot flavored?” That seemed like the most likely option of the choices. If Tony was trying to make yarn flavored muffins they were going to have a hard time. 

“Probably not. That’s in case I need them later.” 

That was alarming. “Need them for what? Where is your recipe?” 

Tony shift from foot to foot and looked away. “In my heart,” he admitted. 

“In your heart,” Steve repeated slowly. Tony threw up his hands. 

“I’m cooking with love, I don’t need a recipe. I don’t like it when other people tell me what to do. I’ll make them my way, taste them, figure out what I did wrong, then make a new batch until they’re right.” He poked Steve in the chest. “Iterative-” poke, “design-” poke. Steve grabbed his hand before he could poke him again. 

“This is baking, not cooking, and certainly not design. You need a recipe if you don’t want them to turn out awful. I’ll look one up. What kind of muffins does she like? Maybe blueberry? Lemon?” He pulled out his phone and stated to search. Tony crossed his arms and leaned against the counter to look over Steve’s shoulder. 

“We can do lemon. Since you’re going to trust some stranger from the internet over your own boyfriend.” 

“You know me, love trusting strangers.” Steve agreed and looked through a few recipes until he found some pictures he liked, and clicked on the website. 

“Well?” Tony asked impatiently, arranging and rearranging the ingredients. He balanced a teaspoon on top of a quarter teaspoon and tried to spin it. It didn’t work, spinning off to hit the floor. Tony left it there. 

“Give me a minute, I’m still scrolling to try to find the recipe. The lady who wrote the recipe is named Mel and she felt the need to take us on her entire lemon poppy seed muffin journey, in great detail. She says people forget about lemon muffins in favor of chocolate, isn’t that so sad? But she decided to take a stand, for lemon muffin lovers everywhere. I think that’s beautiful.” 

“You know what’s more beautiful?” Tony asked, face down on the counter. “Finished muffins. I could have made two batches in the amount of time it's taken you to scroll down. Empires have been founded and fallen in the amount of time it's taken you to find a recipe.” 

Steve kicked him. “I found it. And the comments say it’s good. Though none of them followed the recipe? Listen to this, Sonja says she also added spelt to the muffins, what the hell is spelt? And whatever kamut is, and soft and red wheat instead of flour, she added fresh ground flax seed, almond extract, and extra lemon rind and one tablespoon more butter. That's like a whole new recipe at that point. 

And this next one, Sara didn’t have buttermilk so she used 2% milk and vinegar. That sort of makes sense, meanwhile Laurie replaced the buttermilk with strawberry cheesecake yogurt and vanilla pudding. Why? Who sees 'buttermilk' and thinks 'strawberry cheesecake yogurt'? 

And Meiko says she made it in a loaf pan. Why would she do that? Why not look up a recipe for lemon loaf, if she wanted a loaf? Also she added less sugar then complained that it wasn’t sweet enough. Whose fault is that, Meiko?” 

“Steve. You’re killing me here. Just read the recipe.” 

“And they all gave it five stars, but did they really like the recipe if they felt the need to change so many things?” 

“Steve. Please.” 

“Hi, my name is Anne and I loved this recipe for lemon muffins after I replaced the flour with beef stock and the lemons with meat and the poppy seeds with potatoes and served it in a soup bowl instead of a muffin tin. Best beef stew I’ve ever had. Five stars.” 

Tony waved a knife at him threateningly. “I will kill you. I will actually, literally kill you, if you don't read me the recipe.” 

“Then who would help you bake? Preheat the oven, then we need to mix the dry ingredients. We need flour, sugar, poppy seeds, baking powder, soda and salt. And beef stock.” 

Tony rolled his eyes and turned the oven on. Steve use the measuring cups to pour the sugar into a clean mixing bowl. Tony used a measuring spoon to measure out the baking powder, and dumped it in the bowl. Steve frowned. 

“Was that a tablespoon? It didn’t look like very much.” 

“Probably. It says 1 t.” 

“Is it a big T or a little t?” 

Tony squinted at the small printed words on the name of the spoon. 

“Little?” 

Steve rubbed a hand through his hair. “That’s a teaspoon. You needed the bigger one.” 

“Ok fine, I’ll fill the bigger one with baking powder then use the little one to scoop out the amount I already put in.” 

“We should just start over.” 

“Since when are you a quitter?” Tony asked, already scooping. He got more powder in, after spilling most of it on the table. “There, perfect. Are you impressed? You should be impressed. I’m like a master of ingenuity here.” 

“Your baking skills make me want to cry. Go get the rest of the ingredients from the pantry, the salt, soda and poppy seeds, I don’t trust you to measure anymore.” 

“You trust me with your life but not muffins?” 

Steve threw a spoon at his head and Tony dodged it. “Fine, fine, I’m going.” He walked over to the pantry and rustled around until he found what he was looking for. He set the poppy seeds, salt, and a can of Coke on the counter top. Steve laughed. 

“You’re too much. Put the Coke back and get me the real soda.” 

Tony looked down at the can then back up at him in confusion. “Real soda? Diet Coke? You want a Pepsi?” 

Steve laughed again and gave him a peck on the cheek as he went to the pantry himself to get the box. “This is why I love you, so funny.” 

“Right. Real jokester, that’s me.” Tony said hesitantly. 

Steve came back out and put half a teaspoon of soda in the bowl, and added the salt. He took a whisk and mixed it all together. Tony picked up the box and looked up at him in surprise. 

“Baking soda!” He blurted out. “Baking soda, not soda pop...” he repeated again quietly to himself. 

Steve ignored him. If he stopped to question Tony every time he did something weird, neither of them would ever get anything done. “Now we need to mix buttermilk, lemons, and the eggs.” 

“We don’t have buttermilk. Should I go to the store?” 

“We could use regular milk and vinegar. Oh my god, we’re just like the commenters. I've become a Sara.” 

“Should I get the beef stock?” Tony asked mockingly as Steve made his own version of buttermilk. He made it in a new mixing bowl, and Tony tossed him the bottle of lemon juice. He added that too, and picked up one of the eggs from the carton. Steve tossed it up and down a few times, catching it before it hit the counter. 

“Back when I was in the army, I’d watch the guy’s who worked in the mess crack eggs one handed. They’d go through four dozen in less than a minute. I think I could do it.” 

“What, crack an egg one handed? How confident are you about that?” 

“I’ve never tried but I’m feeling pretty confident.” 

“What if you did it in a new bowl, so if you mess up you won’t get egg shells everywhere?” 

“Then I would have to wash another bowl. I think I’m going to go for it.” 

“I don’t want to be the one to stand in the way of your dreams. Do it.” 

Steve grinned at him and flipped the egg around in his hand as he tried to decide how to hold it. He settled on having his fingers on the top and his thumb on the bottom. He pulled his fingers up and the egg exploded into a million tiny shards of shell, falling into the white milk and becoming invisible. 

“Well, shit.” 

Tony laughed at him. “Oh my god your _face_. I wish I had filmed that. You have egg all over your shirt.” 

Steve scraped sadly at the bowl with a spoon. “I know. I can feel it and it’s gross. I don’t think I’ll be able to get all of the shells out of the milk. I think I need to start the wet part over.” 

Tony handed him a new bowl and sat back down on the other side of the counter. 

“When did this become me cooking while you watch?” Steve said sourly, pouring in more milk. 

“Since you banned me from measuring things. I’ll go get you a new shirt, how about that?” 

Tony went upstairs and came back with a clean shirt. Steve switched tops as Tony neatly cracked the eggs into the bowl using both hands. Steve added the lemon juice and Tony mixed the wet ingredients together and poured it into the dry. He mixed that too, as Steve got out the muffin tins and rubbed them with shortening so the batter wouldn’t stick. Tony carefully poured an equal amount into each cup, and Steve slid it into the oven and set a timer for twenty minutes. 

“You want to lick the bowl?” Steve offered, already licking the spoon. 

“You want to die of salmonella?” 

“Super soldier, can't get sick.” Steve reminded him. “Now we need to make the glaze.” 

“Glaze? What are these, muffins for the Queen of England?” 

“Do you want to skip the glaze and go watch baseball?” 

“Hell yeah.” 

They went back to the living room and plopped down on the couch.. Steve unmuted the TV. The Dodgers were still losing. It was almost comforting in a way. No matter how many armies of aliens or robots they had to fight, at the end of the day they could come home and lay on the couch together and complain about baseball. 

Twenty minutes later the timer went off and they got up to take the muffins out. Steve opened the oven door and they looked at them. 

“They don’t look like muffins,” Tony said hesitantly. “Maybe they need more time?” 

“Maybe,” Steve agreed, and shut the oven door. Tony put another ten minutes on the timer and they sat at the counter. 

“I don’t think an extra ten minutes is going to fix them. They didn’t rise at all. They look like soup. Did you decide to replace the salt with beef stock when I wasn't looking?” 

“Of course not. I think we should broil them.” 

Tony frowned. “The last ten times you’ve tried to broil something you burned it.” 

“I’ll watch real close.” Steve promised. 

“No.” 

“It’s not like we could make them worse at this point.” 

“No!” 

When the timer went off again Steve took them out and put them on the counter. They looked like little puddles of spongy yellow soup. Steve poked one and the batter stuck to his finger. Tony shook his head sadly. 

“We must have forgotten or mismeasured something. Let’s go through the recipe until we figure out what we did wrong.” 

Steve picked up his phone and read the recipe. “The first ingredient is flour. Did you add three cups?” 

“I thought you added the flour.” 

They stared at each other in silence. 

“Did we really forget the first ingredient? The ingredient that makes up the majority of the muffin?” Steve asked. Tony shrugged. 

“That would explain why there was so little batter and why it was so wet. Want to try again?” 

Steve looked over at the dirty pots and spoons over flowing from the sink and the mess of baking powder and raw egg covering the counter. 

“Not particularly. I don’t trust us not to mess it up again.” 

“Ok then, new plan…” 

. 

. 

That afternoon Clint and Natasha came back to the tower, with Natasha’s left arm bound up in a black splint. She stomped up to her room and paused as she saw a package in front of her door. It was a Tupperware full of fresh baked lemon poppy seed muffins. She took a bite and sighed in pure delight. They were perfect. She unfolded the note on top of the container. _“Get well soon, from Tony, Steve, and Bruce (Mostly Bruce)”_

**Author's Note:**

> I never got the appeal of Youtubers who just film their normal life, I thought it was boring. Then Jenna Marbles lured me in with making her dog fly by tying him to 80 balloons and before I knew it I was watching her and her boyfriend do normal tasks like make dinner and boy was it CUTE AS ALL GET OUT. So I had to make a Stony version. The cooking disasters are taken from me trying to cook with my brother and friends over the years, so if you find yourself wondering if anyone could really be that stupid, the answer is yes. Here is the link to the muffin recipe if you were curious (or hungry)...  
> https://www.melskitchencafe.com/lemon-poppy-seed-muffins/


End file.
